Dr Bernhard Schwartländer took up his position as WHO Representative in China on 1 September 2013.Before joining WHO in China, he served as Director for Evidence, Policy and Innovation at UNAIDS headquarters in Geneva and as the United Nations Country Coordinator on AIDS in Beijing, China.Dr Schwartländer held a number of senior international positions including as the Director for Performance Evaluation and Policy at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Director of the World Health Organization’s HIV Department, and as the Director of Evaluation and Strategic Information at UNAIDS.In 2000, Dr Schwartländer undertook a special assignment at the World Bank to perform economic analyses on the cost and impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the responses to it.Prior to joining the United Nations, Dr Schwartländer was the Director of the national AIDS programme in Germany and the Director of the Division of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the Robert Koch-Institut in Berlin, the central biomedical and infectious disease research and reference laboratory of the federal Ministry of Health, Germany.Dr Schwartländer has published widely in scientific journals and books and taught applied epidemiology in Berlin. He brings extensive experience in development policies as well as infectious disease epidemiology and programming at global and country levels.Dr Schwartländer is a medical doctor and holds a doctorate in medical epidemiology. He received his education and professional training in Germany and the US at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention